Factorio Forums

First of I am loving this game, but there are a few details that are driving me crazy, sometimes.

One of which I want to talk about and suggest a fix ... or some possible ways to fix it, at least.

We all know it and the developer as well. When having a huge factorio (pun intended) your initial walking speed sucks, therefore cars, trains, and mecha suits with speed upgrades (and whatever the future holds).
Which are all fine and dandy ... but I also find myself all to often in the situation where I want to go slowly and e.g. approach a belt carefully (cause building something nearby .. or hitching one belt [of many] for a ride .. or because of a million other things) but even with carefully tapping the keys my character runs off and steps on belts where he shouldn't, or runs over the desired belt and steps on the wrong one. That problem gets even worse when the walking speed is increased, like with stone or concrete below, or (even worse) with a mecha suit with several leg upgrades. Speaking of latter I constantly find myself also popping the leg upgrades in and out, or having sets of the armor with different leg upgrades.

And here is how I think it can be fixed:

1. Possible fix 1: Acceleration
   • You character starts to move way slower and increases speed over time. Like trains and cars do. Though it has to be balanced carefully or else fighting gets really hard. Umm, one more thing: Obviously speed is not affected by direction, so when having full speed in one direction changing direction seamlessly does not slow you down.
2. Possible fix 2: Speed modifier:
   1. Walking by default:
      • You are walking by default (very slow speed) and double tap in a direction will make you run at full speed ... whatever that full speed might be)
      • A run key:
        • Pressing shift (or alike) when moving makes you run, else you walk.
   2. Sneaking: (and running by default) edit: mod for this behavior: viewtopic.php?f=97&t=28279
      • A key ... control maybe makes you sneak ... means you move very ... and I mean veeeeery slowly, allowing you to fine tune your position.
3. Possible fix 3: Analog controls:
   • When you have a joystick (or game pad or whatever) around, you can additionally assign axis to you player and total movement speed (in percent of your total) depends on how far you push your stick. (e.g. moving the stick half way = half of max speed)
4. Possible fix 4: Sensitive movements:
   • Treat any belt or rail as hurdle. Steeping over it takes more "effort" ... so when you in full swing everything is as before but when just tapping the key for a moment or just starting to walk you will pause for a fraction of a second on the edge before stepping on or off it. (The rails in way that keeps you far enough from being run over before steeping on, and not from stepping off)

Obviously when not contradicting there is also the possibility to implement more than one method ... e.g. Acceleration, run key, and double tap (to make you run). Or e.g. Analog controls and sneak button ... Or Analog controls and run button. Possibilities are almost endless.
And also It doesn't have to be more than one method.

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A final word to cars. I think I finally figured out why so many crash in so many things when using the car (or tank) it is because the directions are changing. E.g.:

• When pointing north (top of screen) "A" makes you go to the left of screen.
  But when pointing south it makes you go to the right side of screen

Possible fixes:

1. Turn the map.
   • While in car it not only stays in center but also points in same direction ... namely upwards ... but the map rotates below you.
2. Make it like the character controls.
   • W is always up (and so on). Though, this method has the downside that it is hard to determine what key the deceleration is.

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A final final word to every vehicle:

• Usually it doesn't make sense to get out of a moving vehicle, it only gets you killed.
  Fixes:
  1. Get only placed where you aren't run over immediately. (though this might be tricky to implement since it takes a lot of checks)
  2. Easy to implement and a quick fix:
     When the vehicle is moving (needs only one check) you need to tap the exit key twice, else you can't get out (though you can get out like before if not moving).

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The very very final word (I promise)... please, please, pretty please implement the squeeze through mod as part of base game. (Though, climbing over animations for pipes would be really sweet ... but that animation doesn't have to be implemented before final release IMHO)

I'd like run by default (at whatever max speed the player has), walk on keypress (don't use any exoskeletons).

Of course, it wouldn't be too hard to toggle between the behaviors with some UI checkbox.

A mod for acceleration: viewtopic.php?f=92&t=27553

But the biggest problem with high running speed for me is when running and building/mining and it skips a tile sometimes. I don't really need lower speed as much as I need proper code that doesn't skip tiles. And acceleration doesn't help if I hold down the movement and placement keys for a while.

Acceleration would probably be the best option, if done correctly. The original Megaman has a thing where for the first 9 frames of input, you move at 20% speed, it's barely noticeable if you don't pay attention to it, yet it allows perfect precision. I'm also very much in favor of virtual axis for joysticks, although I can't imagine it being too useful with anything but a Steam controller since the game isn't really for gamepads.

Another option would be an optional RTS-style movement where you click somewhere and the player character walks there. Pathfinding might be required, also I'm not sure how the controls would work, mouse is kinda used for other stuff in the game. I'm not exactly keen, it's a possibility, though so I'm throwing it out there.

Cars controls are fine, they just take a bit of getting used to I guess. Frankly I can't tell because I'm just so used to GTA 2, same system as Factorio Speaking of that game though, it has a nifty feature where if you drive at a very sharp angle relative to the road, it will automatically correct your steering to go perfectly straight once you let go of the steering keys. This makes following roads very convenient and would help a lot in Factorio too. Imagine it snaps you to grid if you drive on concrete, but doesn't when you drive over ground, so you have freedom of movement outside your base, but inside you can follow roads effortlessly.

Jumping out of a vehicle at speed is something most games either don't allow you to do or don't penalize you for it because it's a bit of a middle finger to the unsuspecting player, but in the case of Factorio it's kinda hilarious as a deconstruction of the trope. Technically, you are hitting the ground at a speed and throwing yourself right under the wheels.

"What the hell, I just jumped out of my car and it killed me!"

"Duh"

Not that I'd mind if it got fixed, though. No strong feelings either way.

Qon wrote:A mod for acceleration: viewtopic.php?f=92&t=27553

But the biggest problem with high running speed for me is when running and building/mining and it skips a tile sometimes. I don't really need lower speed as much as I need proper code that doesn't skip tiles. And acceleration doesn't help if I hold down the movement and placement keys for a while.

I have a highly dense packed factory ... though i tried to make it more spacious than I usually do them ... anyway there sweet spots where I want to park my character to be refilled by robots ... or inventory crafting for stuff I don't want or need a factory set up to ... or just check stuff that is going on ... ... and it takes up to 20 seconds and several tries to get to that (between 2 by 2 and 4 by 4) area ... hitting belts all the time and carried away into the distance ... and I don't even have speed upgrades, yet.
Also a good thing would be to not change sped for a moment when leaving a belt .. example: You are running up a red belt ... means barley moving .. and then drop off at some point ... then it seems like your character is suddenly whizzing off into the distant. .. in my case often onto another belt ... and I have to get him back again...

This belongs into suggestions, where I moved it into. I left a link from general.
I added it to the list in viewtopic.php?f=80&t=26720 Slow Walking/Running with Powerarmor Exoskeleton
You see: There are already a lots of ideas around this.

I now created a mod to this: see: viewtopic.php?f=97&t=28279 (but suffers from not being able to detect if a key is held down)

I'd love to see a Silent walk implementation: Press a key while running makes you walk.

I will add that I would like to see a small amount of acceleration added to exoskeletons, so that it's easier to finely control your movement when you are using 4+ exoskeletons.