Better batteries and solar panels through research?

[sword2410]

The current capacity of solar panels (60W) and batteries (2.5kj) could be acceptable initially, I propose to implement improvements through research to increase their capacities, say: initially would be level 1 (as they are now) at level 2 would increase in 100% capacity and level 3 will increase to 200%.

[n9103]

Several of the mods have some sort of expansion to the solar and capacitor levels, perhaps one of them would work for you in the interim?

[sword2410]

Several of the mods have some sort of expansion to the solar and capacitor levels, perhaps one of them would work for you in the interim?

Yes, I modified the parameters of the solar panels and batteries lua files directly in the game directory, it worked for me, but would be very useful if implemented in the game as vanilla.

By the way, which mod? Maybe you can tell me?

[Balinor]

I believe better solar options in addition to other alternative sources of energy such as oil/gas/wind have been discussed by the developers but are yet to be implemented. I haven't heard that anything has changed in this regard so it should make it in at some point.

[kovarex]

Don't doubt that we would love to have more details in this area (at least tier 2, 3 of solar, accumulator, better engines (tourbines), different advanced ways of making energy (nuclear reactors), chemical processing part of the games based on fluids and rafineries, oil etc.

The main problem is the graphics, Albert is working on enemies now, and it takes some time. There are so many areas of the game graphics that need attention, and we need to pick what is most urgent, not what we want the most.
The players always judge the game using the worst part of the graphics, so we first need to make the worst parts better ...

Possible current or future areas:

• Enemies
• Enemy structures
• New machines
• Game icons
• Building trashes (when you destroy building and it just dissapears, it is bad)
• Dead and dying trees (In far future trees on fire)
• Fighting effects (projectiles, explosions, poision clouds, lasers, laser beams etc)
• Terrain (there is lot of work, bigger patches of terrain, more variations, it will look good, we have lot of ideas, but takes time as well)
• Terrain doodats (small things with or without game meaning on the terrain)
• More tiers (and types) of passive defense (turrets)
• New player animations (for different armors)
• UI elements (arrows and other ingame indicators)
• Gui graphics improvements
• More flora (trees, bushes)
• Fauna (like fishes, but other)
• Vehicles (Some kind of tank at least)
• Repair robots (similar to logistic ones), maybe even some small robots that help you in the fight

Every element in the list needs some planing, when prototype is made, we have usually long discussion, how should it be altered, then first version is made, we don't like it, so we make 2nd or 3rd, then we are more or less content, and the time pushes us to go to next subject, but we note to ourself, that we will go back and do 4th or 5th version later when we get time.

The reason why we would like to push to get to steam, or get more sales soon, is that we see very clearly now, that we would really use at least 2 more graphics working on the project, but people are expensive ...

Anyway, today we finally configured our computers, so they can be used as render slaves for Albert, right now my computer is helping to render the enemy sprite-sheets, so the work should get faster

[kovarex]

But to give you something useful, you can try this mod (I just updated it to work in 0.6.x version).

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... 5896#p5896

[ssilk]

Quite interesting... What I ask me is: What's the reason not to use some bad graphics, or just a white box with some letters in, so that someone sees just enough of what it should be? Ok, it will look ugly, but on the other side: Shortly ago I played Lego with my little nieces; we built a train. And then the blocks ran out and we couldn't finish the bridge. But after some trying we used the Barbie Dreamhouse to build the pillar for one side, and for the other side we used just the bundled stack of old newspapers. Works fine!
The point is: instead of Lego we have here Factorio and my thesis is, that everything should work in the same way, as long as the player can imagine the missing parts himself. There is a white area with a P in it? No! there is clearly a a piece of pipe!
Works of course not for everything, but I would say the important stuff is to introduce new game mechanics (like chemicals etc.) and the past showed clearly, the earlier, the better. I could life for such new things with really ugly graphics and I'm sure, the most of the others too.

And for thus, who can't life with it: why not making some feature-switch into the preferences? "Use alpha-state game elements? There might be bugs, which aren't fixed in this release and it uses replacement graphics! Yes/no"

My experience for feature-switches was and is, that they are in some cases so useful for early, not so well tested features, that the afford to bring the switching in, comes out within the release after doing it.

[n9103]

Unfortunately, just about everything you described as reasons graphics shouldn't matter don't apply to the mass market of gamers.
Those they do apply to are the ones that got in as backers already.

[ssilk]

Graphics does matter! of course! It is an important thing. But if you need to implement and test something graphics can hinder you.
So I made the suggestion with the switch. See above at the end.

[kovarex]

Maybe an official mod.

[ssilk]

Yes, much better idea, than mine...
but I don't know how complex it is to move the feature from the mod into the main-game. I think that thought you already made...